John Saturnall's Feast (13 page)

‘You can taste them, can't you?’

He nodded.

‘I knew you would. From the day I bore you. We have always kept the Feast. Down all the generations.’

He thought of all the days spent tramping the slopes. All the nights spent bent over the book, his eyes aching, his head bursting with words.

‘Now you will keep it, John. For us all.’

The word caught at him like the spine of a thorn.

‘All?’

‘I told you,’ his mother said. ‘The garden was for everyone. We were all Saturnus's people once. So we keep the Feast. We keep it for all of them . . .’

She looked down at the page and John followed her gaze. At first he did not understand. Then he saw the faces.

They filled the page behind the tables, the men and women dressed in smocks and skirts, their faces traced in faded ink: full-cheeked and heavy-browed. A great jostling crowd of revellers . . . John stared. The villagers stared back. At the sight of them, he felt the ember inside him glow.

She was playing a trick, he told himself. This was her final riddle. In a moment she would smile and explain.
Don't believe every old story you hear.
. . But she only watched him with sunken eyes.

‘We keep it for them?’ John echoed.

‘For all of them.’

At those words, the ember glowed hotter.

‘They've forgotten,’ his mother went on. ‘That is all. Forgotten the Feast. Forgotten how the first men and women lived. In contentment together. In amity . . .’

But John felt no contentment or amity. He saw the torch draw its burning arc through the darkness, the broad faces surging forward. Ephraim Clough cringing beneath John's fist. In place of the spiced wine's balm, deep inside him he felt his anger flare into flame.

‘But they drove us out,’ he burst out. ‘They burned our home. They called you a witch! They hate us! They've always hated us!’

He felt the hot tears prickle behind his eyes. But his mother was shaking her head.

‘There is more to learn, John,’ she said, her breath coming with effort. ‘Beyond your anger. And others to beware. Ones who seek the Feast. Ones who would bend its nature to their purpose . . . ‘

‘The Feast is ours!’ he shouted. ‘Not theirs! Ours!’

He jumped to his feet.

‘John, wait, there is more to tell . . . ‘

But now the thatch was blazing again, the red flames licking up into the darkness.

‘I wish you were a witch!’ he threw at her. ‘I wish you had poisoned them all!’

He turned and stumbled out of the hearth, her voice pursuing as he strode towards the archway. He pushed aside the leathery ivy. Then he was crashing forward into the wood, her voice growing fainter.

John, wait, there is more to tell .
. .

He had learned enough, John told himself as he pushed through the low branches. All around him the outlines of the chestnuts rose up. The freezing air held the scents of the wood in layers. When he could no longer hear her voice, he sank down.

That night was colder than any before. Huddled in a hollow under a blanket of leaves, John drifted in a half-sleep, the torchlit faces of the villagers drifting before him, the flames galloping up into the night. When dawn came, his anger was buried deep inside him. Deep where no one would see. Not even his mother.

The smell of the fire guided him back. The chimney rose above the bare branches. But no smoke showed. The night's store of wood must have been exhausted, he supposed. His angry words returned to him, and his mother's answers. The answers he had shunned. There was more to know, she had claimed. More to tell. Now she would explain, he supposed. He would nod obediently. He pushed aside the ivy.

His mother lay in her usual place, wrapped in her cloak facing the back wall of the hearth, her long black hair hanging loose down her back. Her shivering had calmed, he saw.

‘I came back,’ John announced.

His voice sounded loud in the deserted place. But she made no reply. He rubbed his arms against the cold. The hearth's ancient soot smelled different, he thought.

‘I said I came back,’ he repeated.

Still his mother did not stir. A gust of wind raised a little blizzard of ashes from the fire. In its midst sat a black slab. John frowned, then walked forward.

The book's blackened pages still rested in their charred boards. As John stared, wondering at the volume's destruction, a different smell rose from under the soot. Not the charred pages. Something damp and clammy. A faint flutter started up in his stomach.

‘Ma?’

He remembered her voice from the previous night. His own angry rejection . . . He would read her the whole book, he resolved. Cook her a sackful of Paradise Loaves. He would never utter an angry word again.

‘We'll keep the Feast, Ma,’ John promised. ‘Just like you said.’

They could write the book again, he thought. He had every dish by heart. In a moment she would rise. She would shake her head at his temper. He would set off with the bag in search of that day's supper. His feet crunched on the frosty ground as he walked forward. He knelt down beside her. But as he lifted her hair out of the ash, his mother's head rolled back. Her sightless eyes stared into his own.

The breath caught in John's throat. Suddenly the wet winding-sheet smell was in his nostrils, the cloth wrapped around his face. The light in the wood seemed to alter as if a shadow had passed overhead.

We'll keep the Feast .
. .

She must have waited here for him to come back. Lying here, coughing. He bent and touched her cold arm. He took her hand and remembered her stroking his head, combing his hair with her fingers. The moment the bump on his head had drawn a wince from him. He looked around at the silent trees and broken walls. A cold drift of air rolled forward through the dark trunks, its chill breaking over him. But the coal lodged inside him glowed with a steady heat. His anger would never leave him, he knew. Her lifeless fingers slid from his own.

Then his narrow chest heaved. No one would hear him, he knew, as the first bitter sob swelled inside him. No one would come. Alone in the depths of Buccla's Wood, John abandoned himself to grief.

‘Saturnall?’ Ben demanded. ‘What kind of a name's that?’

‘His,’ Josh answered. ‘That's what he said.’ The driver could not remember seeing Ben Martin's long face look so lively as he glared indignantly at the boy.

‘After all that jawing I did. Then he goes and tells you!’

John looked between the two men, one aggrieved, the other hiding grin.

He had made no decision to be silent. He had made no resolution to speak either. When he opened his mouth, he recalled how Josh and Ben rubbed the warmth back into his limbs, the life creeping painfully back through his numb arms and legs. As if something frozen inside him was thawing.

It had taken three days to scrape a hole in the frosty ground. Another day to gather the stones. He could not bring himself to close her eyes so he had covered her with the cloak. After that the days of wandering began.

Hunger had driven him out of the wood. He was foraging on the slopes when Jake Starling had seized him and dragged him down. He was tied up in the roofless hut where Anne Chaffinge had thrust bread at him. Father Hole had come with Josh who led the mule on a halter.

‘Buckland Manor,’ the priest had growled. The scar on his face pulsed an angry red. ‘It was her wish.’

Ben was still grumbling that night when they pitched camp behind a copse of trees. Josh spent the evening trying to clean John's coat. His filthy shirt and breeches could be hidden beneath it, the men decided. When darkness fell they lay down to sleep. The fire burned low. Somewhere beyond the circle of light John heard the mule stamp and snort. The trees of Buccla's Wood rose around him. If he closed his eyes he could see the tables bend under the weight of the dishes with their rich flavours and pungent smells. He remembered his own hesitant voice. He would keep the Feast, he had promised her. How would he do that now?

There was more to learn, she had told him. And she had warned him too. There were others who sought the Feast.

He tossed and turned on the hard ground, his thoughts veering from her last words to the day he had spied the gatehouse on the distant ridge. She had served there, she had said. She had chosen the Manor as his sanctuary.

‘Remember, if they take you up before Sir William you keep your eyes down and you stand,’ Josh explained the next morning. ‘That's unless they tell you to kneel. He don't like being looked at, Sir William. That goes for his daughter too.’

‘And your friend Mister Pouncey?’ added Ben.

‘Maybe him'n'all,’ conceded Josh. ‘Everybody else, you call ‘em “Master”, even if they ain't. And don't stare at ‘em like you've been doing to Ben here . . . ‘

‘Wasn't staring
at
me,’ Ben corrected Josh. ‘More like straight through.’

‘Don't do that neither,’ said Josh. ‘No one likes being treated like a hole in a hedge.’ He pulled John's coat straight and flattened tufts of hair. ‘Understand?’

John nodded. His dull resignation had receded. Now, to his surprise, the first nerves fluttered in his stomach. As he helped lift the packs and chests onto the horses, he remembered his mother's dry comment on Sir William.
Tau aren't likely to catch sight of that one .
. .

The road dipped then rose again. A long descent brought them into Callock Marwood where they passed an ancient chapel built from undressed stone then a malthouse and mill. John walked beside the mule. Ahead, he heard men shouting and the rumble of heavy wheels. Around the next bend, their track joined a broader lane crowded with men, carts and animals. Ahead, the thoroughfare rose steeply.

The ridge, John remembered. It had seemed so tiny from the edge of Buccla's Wood. On the other side lay Buckland Manor.

A steady flow of wagons, carts and sweating porters was climbing the steep lane. To either side, beechwoods stretched away. At the top, two low towers flanked a pair of massive barred gates which bore a coat of arms. But heavy timbers obscured the design.

‘Sir William nailed those gates shut himself,’ Josh told John.

They reached the foot then began to climb. All around John drivers bellowed at straining horses or imperturbable oxen. Heavy wheels slipped in the gritty mud. From the towers, men dressed in green tunics looked down on the porters, carters and animals milling below, directing them to a narrower side-entrance. Josh led the piebald by the halter, following an ox-cart laden with timber. Soon the gatehouse turrets loomed over John. At the top of the ridge, he looked back.

The dark line of Buccla's Wood marked the far horizon. There was the chimney, barely visible above the trees, no thicker than one of the hairs from his head. His mother's last words came back to him, her sunken cheeks pocked with shadow.
There is more to tell .
. .

He would never hear those words now. Instead he would learn the rites of Buckland Manor. He turned and gazed down the broad drive, lined with beeches and flanked by lawns. At the end rose Buckland Manor. Once again, John's gaze fluttered about windows, doors, gates and roofs, searching for somewhere to alight. Above the massive stone walls, great chimneys belched thick white smoke. His mother had sent him here. His new life lay within . . .

‘Oy, Addlewit! Get moving there or get out the way!’

Abruptly he was shoved from behind. A grumbling porter shunted him forward and, with a surprised grunt, John stumbled through the gate. He had entered Buckland Manor.

The carters’ track ran behind a high brick wall which shielded the house from inquisitive gazes. Ben walked beside the mule. John followed, trudging down the muddy track towards a jumble of stables, outhouses and sheds which surrounded two great yards. Josh pointed to the outermost where carts and wagons, oxen and horses, drivers and porters formed long snaking lines.

‘That's us,’ the driver told John and Ben, pointing to the first of the two yards. At the gate before the second, men dressed in different-coloured tunics bent over papers laid out on trestle tables. ‘Red livery's the Kitchen,’ Josh explained. ‘Green's the Household. Purple's the Estate. Not much love lost between them.’

They took their places at the end of a line, Josh craning his neck as if looking for someone. As Ben shuffled forward, a short greasy haired man sidled up.

‘King Charles himself,’ the man muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘Progress with twenty ladies to Hampton Court Palace. His likeness. Like the sound of that?’

Ben stared. ‘What?’

‘Ocean of flies,’ hissed the crooked-mouthed man. ‘Dropping out of a cloud over Bodman. Very strange.’

Ben began to edge away. But the man followed.

‘Terrible monster born near Hadensworth.’ The man shook his head in sorrow. ‘Tragic.’ He thrust a pamphlet at Ben. ‘Good picture though. Look. See the second head? That's how the little mite came out. You can read all about it inside, a clever fellow like you . . .’

And it's all gospel truth, ain't it, Calybute?’ Josh called over.

‘Mister Palewick!’ Calybute hailed the driver as if he had just noticed him. ‘Of course it is
. Mercurius Bucklandicus,’
he waved more pamphlets, ‘knows nothing but truth.’